Snapchat to launch ‘Real Life’ online digital magazine

While Snapchat funds the new magazine, it maintains independent existence and will not be influenced by ‘likes and shares,’ as the norm is in social circles

Snapchat announced the launch of a new digital magazine named “Real Life.” The magazine goes online on June 27 and will have content matching its title. It means that the focus will be on content that deals with the life of netizens in the postmodern era and the complex interactions that have come to grip the users’ exposure given the plethora of social media sites and the various gadgets used to access it.

The magazine is being backed entirely by Snapchat but will still be allowed to function independently. Further, its sociologist and Snapchat employee Nathan Jurgenson that would serve to be the first Editor-in-chief of Real Life.

Other senior editors who would be contributing to Real Life include Rob Horning, Alexandra Molotkow, and Sarah Nicole Prickett, who have earlier been associated with publications such as New Inquiry and Adult Magazine.

According to Jurgenson, the magazine will have “one piece of writing every weekday.” The aim will be to reach out to as many users as possible, which includes desktop users as well. Snapchat though is entirely a mobile-only affair.

Real Life will be different from general news site serving dollops of the most current news events from the tech world or elsewhere.

“I’ve argued that ‘online’ and ‘offline,’ like ‘body’ and ‘mind,’ aren’t like two positions on a light switch — a perspective I’ve called digital dualism,” wrote Jurgenson explaining his mission as head of Real Life. “Instead, all social life is made of both information and material; it’s technological and human, virtual and real.”

To put in other words, the magazine will dwell on how the digital media is integrated into our social lives and so on.

It was only recently that Snapchat had introduced a revamped user interface that merged the Discover and Live Stories, a ploy which experts said had to do with driving more focus on its Discover section. That again had to do with pushing more ad revenue.